Question NW3489 to the Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies
11 December 2023 - NW3489
Mazzone, Ms NW to ask the Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies
Considering the Auditor General’s Budgetary Review and Recommendations Report referring to the Postbank’s Information Technology vulnerabilities and the instruction by the SA Reserve Bank in 2021 to resolve its IT issues, why do these concerns continue to exist?
Reply:
The Postbank which was previously a division of SAPO used SAPO’s outdated and ageing IT infrastructure which was not fit for banking purposes. As a result, the bank embarked on an IT infrastructure modernisation project which intended to address its legacy IT issues including those identified by the SA Reserve Bank. Progress has been made in this regard and the project is 70% complete.
In September 2023, in addressing the SA Reserve variation notice conditions and as part of its IT infrastructure modernisation, the Postbank migrated from an old financial switch to a new financial switch, which resulted in some issues which impacted the payment of SASSA grants.
The issues were identified, resolved and the payment processing system has since been stabilised resulting in 4.8 million beneficiaries being paid in September 2023. After this stabilisation phase, there have been no issues with the processing of payments.
Thank You.